Guy Thorvaldsen.
A quiet, cloudless, early-winter morning in Madison, and I’m perched on a boulder at the shore of Lake Monona, lacing up my old hockey skates. Over the last two days, the lake has finally taken hold of itself, solidified into a 3,000-acre sheet of old wavy glass. I’m 72, but each time the lake freezes over, I’m a kid again. I keep track of the half-dozen other skaters already on the ice, understanding that we are a particular community that depends on each other to help guesstimate the thickness. We also know better than to wait too long to get out skating. Some winters, between snow and the inevitable warm spell, the lake only offers a half-dozen nice days of pristine skating.
A man about my age comes up and stands next to me. He’s not carrying skates and has a pair of binoculars around his neck. He asks if I’m a good skater.
“Yes, I can skate,” I say tentatively, wary about his intentions.
He tells me that he lives on the other side of the lake, more than a mile or so away. For two days he’s been watching a lone tundra swan, seemingly stuck in the middle of the lake and would I be willing to check on it. I look to where he’s pointing and see nothing but glare. In my head, I hear a chorus of dissent. My wife. My mom. My more level-headed friends. They love me and feel the same protectiveness when I’m atop a ladder cleaning my gutters.
But I love tundra swans, too, their majesty, thick necks, and jazzy honks. In part because Lake Monona is shallow, it’s a good source of food for migrating birds. Year round my wife and I walk the shore, giddy at the array of migrating waterfowl: coot, geese, white pelicans, goldeneyes, buffleheads, mergansers, loons, swans.
I tell the man I’ll give it a try but can’t promise anything (you know, like coming back alive). I finish getting ready, which this year includes my fancy, new, padded hockey shorts — a concession to my old bones. I check on my homemade ice picks: two small wooden blocks, each with a filed down screw mounted in one end. They are connected by a string that runs through the sleeves of my jacket like little kids’ mittens. In a perfect world, if I fall through, I will use these to stab into the ice and pull myself out. He hands me a long-handled fishing net for me to bring the swan to shore. Okay, yes, I am possibly deluded.
Then again, I’m being asked to help this injured, abandoned swan — a rare moment of hope and perfect antidote to life in the soulless, Trumpian universe. With net and heart in hand, I step out onto the ice, get one last instruction from the man to head towards the big, white home on the opposite shore, and I’m away. Other than the somewhat terrifying whoop and warp of expanding ice and the scrape of my blades, the world is silent, and I am, too.
Beneath me is pure glass. For a brief time, I can see the lake bottom and patches of green seaweed reaching for the light. I go slowly, inspecting the fissures in the ice, the only way to approximate its thickness — at least two inches — the bare minimum. Soon, I can no longer see the lake’s bottom, just a field of black, as if the world flipped over in the night, and I am skating over outer space. It is at once breathtaking and sublime.
I am not a Wisconsin native. I grew up on a large, saltwater bay in New York. For a time, I made my living as a shellfisher. Due to the salt, the bay was more prone to slush than ice. My horizon was at sea-level, a thin, distant strip of barrier beach between me and the Atlantic Ocean. Midwesterners find it hard to imagine. Conversely, I get claustrophobic around hills, forests and mountains. But now, gliding beneath an unfettered sky across this still and soundless lake, I am home again, and my heart beats freely.
Near the middle, I pause and take stock. I can barely make out people on the shore. I smile and shake my head. “This is a little nuts.” I imagine a fisherman pulling sodden me out of the water in early spring. Then I see another skater following me. He looks familiar and reminds me that his name is Ryan, and we’d met last year — his first time ever on skates! He’s willing to help, and I’m very happy to have him!
We carry on skating, a bit farther apart than normal so as not to tempt fate. And then we see her, perhaps 100 yards away, sitting quietly on the ice. As we approach, she springs to life, whacking the air like wet laundry in the wind with her white and stunningly immense wings. She is, however, unable to stand or move away — and, thankfully, is not frozen into the ice.
Swans are notoriously aggressive, so we approach cautiously, waiting for her to settle. After a couple of tries, we manage to get the net over her. She continues to struggle. On our knees now, it is surreal to have her in hand, sensing her power in the dense layering of feathers. It takes a good while for us to safely adjust the wings entwined in the net’s webbing. We decide it would be best to tow her along the ice with the net. It was a long, slow way back to shore.
On shore, Dave (whose name I finally learned) was ready with a nylon dog crate, and the three of us lifted her in. With weary eyes, she gave up the struggle, resting her head on the lip of the cage. We said our good-byes, and Dave left for the wildlife refuge center. Sadly, two days later, we learned the swan was suffering from avian influenza and needed to be put down.
Though I could not say what exactly, this morning broke open something pure and hopeful in me. I was reminded that wild animals and wild landscapes are strangers to humans — until they are not and need help. Dave had followed his heart and instincts, recruiting strangers to help. The swan received compassionate care. And the ice (its current political connection not lost on me) seemingly miraculously, had held up this bird, Ryan, and me in the crystalline palm of its hand. Hope floats, even in winter.
Guy Thorvaldsen is a journeyman carpenter and taught English at Madison College for 15 years.
